In urban areas it is common to provide multilevel car parking buildings. The buildings have multiple floors connected by ramps. One drives a vehicle from floor to floor until a free parking bay is found. Such car parks have a low usage of floor space due to the need for roadways and the requirement that each parking bay be sufficiently large to allow a vehicle to be driven into the bay and for the driver and any passengers to exit the vehicle.
It has been proposed to replace access ramps with a vertical lift to each floor. However it is still necessary to provide roadways on each floor and large size parking bays. It has also been proposed to use lifts which not only have a platform which can be moved vertically to access parking bays on different levels but which also have a transport device which moves the vertical lift horizontally to access laterally adjoining parking bays.